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Domestic partnerships spark virulent comments

In today's story about a proposal to extend insurance benefits to domestic partners of some Milwaukee Public School employees, I didn't have enough space to include all the seething quotes from people who considered the proposal and by extension, same-sex relationships, to be the root of evil, the reason why families break apart and the reason why it rained so much during Pridefest.

Audience membes were so vocal that when Larry Dupuis, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, got up to testify to the committee, a man in the audience started yelling that he was a communist from a communist organization.

As Michael Bonds, chair of the School Board's finance committee, ordered the gentleman to be escorted out of the room by security, Dupuis turned back to the microphone and dutifully -- and almost apologetically -- defended the guy's right to speak.

At the end of the testimony, board member Jennifer Morales, who sponsored the proposal, said she was glad that Bonds had tried to keep people from using her name directly in their comments (many did anyway before Bonds could cut them off).

But, she said, "We do all know who we're talking about here."

After a pause, she added:

"If it were possible in the state of Wisconsin to marry my partner, I would to it in an instant. I'm not saying that we need to expand benefits, I'm just saying that we need to apply the benefits we already offer equally."

Morales and her partner, Tina Owen, the lead teacher at an MPS small high school called the Alliance School, had a marraige ceremony in Vancouver last year.